knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE, message = FALSE, warning = FALSE, quiet = TRUE, cache = TRUE)

library(tidyverse)
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library(htmltools) # to scale widgets horizontally
library(DT) # to show the datatable at the end

# change this location to wherever you downloaded the file from
dfFlat <- read_csv(file = "G:/Projects/COPS2017Grant/flatFileForODP.csv")
## Rows: 4225 Columns: 25
## ── Column specification ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
## Delimiter: ","
## chr  (20): Filename, CR, Beat, Arrest, SubjectCondition, SubjectInjuredPrior...
## dbl   (4): Time, Weight, HeightInInches, NumberOfOfficers
## dttm  (1): Date
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## ℹ Specify the column types or set `show_col_types = FALSE` to quiet this message.

Exec Summary

The use of force by law enforcement officers is a subject of great public interest as well as critical importance to law enforcement agencies. From 2018 to 2022, thanks to an award from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office), the Rochester (New York) Police Department (RPD) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) collaborated to study the RPD’s use of force incidents. The project’s primary goal was to help the public develop an understanding of RPD uses of force that goes beyond engaging online with viral videos. To ensure the privacy of both officers and other persons involved in RPD uses of force, as well as to distill a large number of incidents into an analysis for the lay public, the researchers aggregated use of force incidents into a dataset.

That dataset is now hosted on the RPD Open Data Portal and available for download. This page introduces the dataset and provides example analysis. The R code used to create the plots you see on this page are available here.

The dataset contains RPD uses of force from July 6th 2016 to June 7th 2021. Each row of the dataset is a single use of force involving a single subject and one or more RPD officers.

Persons interested in learning more about this project can read the official report on the DOJ COPS office website here.

This page shows some example analyses and visuals that anyone can now do at home with the data hosted by RPD. For instance, you can examine for yourself the most and least common use of force tactics used by Rochester police officers:

The What types of behavior by subjects do officers record in use of force incidents?

Date/Time